The Claim
1511 Words
The Magic Is Breaking
Seren had felt her mark burn before.
But never like this.
It wasn’t just hot — it howled, like fire trapped under her skin, clawing to get out. It pulsed up her throat and across her back in blinding waves of silver light. Every time she blinked, she saw flashes of other lives.
Blood. Fire. Passion. Betrayal. Kisses that could destroy kingdoms.
The faces of the boys she’d come to know — Elias, Kael, Talon, Rhys — kept appearing in those flashes.
She wasn’t just remembering them.
She was reliving them.
“Seren!” a voice called out, sharp and panicked.
She barely registered the door slamming open before her knees buckled.
Arms caught her mid-fall.
Kael.
His flames were gentle now — his palms warm against her icy skin. “You’re burning up.”
“It’s… the bond,” she choked out. “Something’s wrong.”
Behind Kael, the other three appeared — Elias like a shadow in the doorway, Rhys pacing like a caged animal, Talon unnaturally still.
They’d all felt it.
The bond was shifting.
Something had changed.
They took her to an abandoned observatory on the academy’s northern cliff — a place shielded from magic, from prying eyes, and from the spellbound students.
There, under the cracked glass of the old moon dome, she faced them all.
“Tell me what’s happening,” she said. “Please.”
Elias stepped forward first. Always the calm one.
“The mark has nearly completed its pattern,” he said. “We’ve all… given you part of our power. It’s binding us. Tying us together.”
“To protect you,” Kael added. “That’s what it was meant for. Long ago.”
“And now it’s reawakening,” said Talon. “But it’s different this time.”
“Because you’re different,” Rhys growled.
“Because she hasn’t chosen,” Elias corrected, eyes narrowing.
“Chosen?” Seren echoed. “I didn’t know I had to choose!”
The air thickened. Four pairs of supernatural eyes burned into her.
Talon, leaning against the old telescope, finally spoke.
“You were never supposed to be claimed by all of us. But we each… recognized you. Even if we didn’t want to.”
“The bond is unstable,” Elias added. “Too many links. Too much power.”
“So I have to break it?” she whispered.
“Or choose which one to keep,” Rhys said quietly. “And which ones to lose.”
Before she could answer, her mark flared again — blinding white.
Time shattered.
She wasn’t in the observatory anymore.
She was… in a castle.
Old stone. Stained glass. Moonlight dancing across velvet floors.
She stood in a circle — the same four boys surrounding her, but dressed in ancient finery.
This was a memory.
Her memory.
Kael wore armor charred black by dragonfire. Talon had gold-threaded robes and a mocking smirk. Elias was draped in royal crimson, his fangs bare. Rhys… wore wolf pelts and war paint, standing barefoot on marble.
“You can’t love us all,” past-Elias said.
“But I do,” she whispered.
“Then you’ll curse us all,” Rhys said.
She remembered then — what she’d done.
She had loved them all.
And because of that, they had died.
The mark had been a gift.
But her indecision had turned it into a curse.
She gasped as the memory snapped back.
The boys were still staring.
Waiting.
Judging.
Hurting.
“I remembered,” she said. “Everything.”
“And?” Kael asked gently.
“I broke all of you. Before.”
Silence.
Then Talon’s voice, raw and too honest: “Then give us a different ending this time.”
“I don’t know how. I don’t know who to choose.”
Rhys stood. “Then maybe we should choose for you.”
He stormed out.
They left her alone in the observatory for a time.
But eventually, they came back.
One by one.
• Kael brought her fire blossoms, the kind that bloomed once every blood moon. “You don’t have to decide tonight,” he said, brushing her hand. “I’ll wait lifetimes if I have to.”
• Talon came next, smirking like he wasn’t dying inside. “You always loved my charm first,” he whispered, then paused. “But I want you to choose me for who I am when I’m not charming.”
• Elias didn’t speak much. He simply sat beside her, letting the silence hold them both. Then finally: “I won’t ask you to love me again. But I will always protect your soul.”
• Rhys didn’t return.
Not yet.
But his scent lingered in the air — like stormclouds and regret.
That night, Seren woke to whispers in the dark.
A hooded figure stood at the edge of her bed.
“Four Alphas. One Heart. The moon will break, and so will the bond.”
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“The one who cursed you. The one who loved you first. The one who wants you back.”
And then he was gone.
It was nearly midnight when the glass dome cracked.
Not from magic.
From lightning.
The sky outside had turned savage, clouds bruised purple and silver, wind howling like a wild thing trying to get in.
And with it, Rhys returned.
He burst through the observatory’s arched doorway, soaked in rain, eyes glowing the color of a full moon at war.
“You really remembered it all?” he asked, voice low, shaking.
Seren rose slowly from the bench.
“Yes.”
“Then tell me. Tell me who you loved most.”
She froze.
“Rhys—”
“Don’t lie to me,” he said, stepping forward, fists clenched at his sides. “Back then, it was me. I felt it. I died for it.”
Seren’s breath hitched.
“You think I wanted to love all of you?” she snapped suddenly, her own voice rising. “Do you think it was easy? That watching each of you die — for me — wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever lived through?”
Lightning flashed again. Rhys’s jaw flexed, pain etched into every line of his face.
“You can’t save us all this time,” he said. “You’ll only doom us again.”
“Then help me,” she begged. “Don’t walk away. Fight for me, Rhys.”
He closed the distance between them, stopping just short of touching her.
“I have been. Since the day I met you.”
Then he turned and disappeared into the storm.
Later that night, the mark on Seren’s skin cracked.
Not visibly — not in any way her eyes could see.
But she felt it, like a spiderweb fracture across her soul. The energy that once shimmered with possibility now burned with pressure, like a volcano trying not to explode.
“It’s collapsing,” Talon whispered when he felt the shift through their shared tether.
“Too much conflict. Too much pain,” Elias muttered, sitting beside her in the dorm’s candle-lit library. “We’re pulling you apart.”
Kael knelt before her, gently taking her hands.
“There has to be another way,” she said desperately. “There has to.”
“Then we find it,” Kael said. “Together.”
But the truth was there in their eyes.
Time was running out.
Later still, Talon pulled her onto the rooftop of the east tower.
The stars were too bright. The moon was sharp-edged.
She leaned against the rail, silent.
“I didn’t come here to compete,” Talon said, his usual smirk absent. “I came to find you again.”
“You remember too?” she asked.
He nodded. “You told me once that I made you feel… seen. Even when you hated yourself.”
“You did,” she whispered.
“Let me do it again.”
Then he kissed her.
Slow. Devastating. Familiar.
And yet… wrong.
She pulled away.
“Talon—”
“It’s okay,” he said quickly, blinking away the shine in his eyes. “It’s not you. It’s the curse. You’re… still choosing.”
She didn’t have the heart to tell him the worst part:
She didn’t know if she ever could.
By sunrise, her dorm room was filled with candlelight and silence.
A letter sat on her desk.
Old parchment. Familiar seal.
The crest of the First Witch Queen — the one who had cursed her bloodline.
Her hands trembled as she opened it.
“My dearest daughter of soul and fire,
You loved too many hearts and so split your own.
Four cannot be kept. One must be claimed.
Or all shall burn again.
And this time, the world will burn with you.”
Beneath the text was a symbol: a fifth circle.
A forgotten mark.
One not tied to Kael, Rhys, Talon, or Elias.
But to someone else.
Someone waiting.
- Writer
